Leadership English

A CTO who led town halls for hundreds of people came to me convinced his English was the problem. When we looked closer, the real issue was storytelling, and it taught me something important about executive presence for non-native English speakers.In this episode, I also talk about what I want the world to stop overlooking, which is what it takes to lead in English as a second language. I walk through the invisible effort, the cost of adaptation, why we confuse familiarity with competence, and what it means to become undeniable.This conversation is for you if you lead in a language that isn’t your first and you’re ready to have that effort recognized.Also, I have some huge news… Leadership English won a Signal Award! 🏆 Thank you so much for being a part of this community and supporting the podcast!Listen to more full episodes of Leadership English here: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcastGet exclusive episode bonuses in the Leadership English Insiders here: https://tanniasuarez.com/insider—CHAPTERS00:00 The CTO who thought English was the problem00:48 Leadership English wins a Signal Award01:20 Thank you02:00 Who I am and why this work matters02:58 The invisible effort of leading in a second language04:20 The cost of adaptation05:25 The executive who made her audience laugh06:45 Why we confuse familiarity with competence07:27 Becoming undeniable09:04 The future of leadership doesn’t have one accent10:00 What this award really means10:54 Something to try this week—📌 Follow Tannia:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asktanniaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanniasuarez/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asktannia/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@asktanniaYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tanniasuarezSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6i2KREABJOlsZmIuEoDsig?si=777b14460e6a4357Podcast: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcastBlog: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/blog

Congresswoman Analilia Mejía is diplomatic, but never shies away from confrontation. As the first Afro-Latina elected to the United States Congress and a daughter of Dominican and Colombian immigrants, she's spent 25 years learning how to build trust across real political and cultural differences.This conversation covers clarity of purpose as the anchor for adapting across cultures, a concrete framework for disagreeing without becoming disagreeable, and a surprising tactic she uses in the highest-stakes rooms in the country.This conversation is for you if you've ever wondered how much of your accent, your culture, or your real self you're allowed to bring into a room that doesn't look or sound like you.---Timestamps0:00 Introduction0:40 Adapting to the room versus editing who you are2:44 Clarity of purpose as a center of gravity4:33 The housing story, and what assumption got wrong7:55 Disagree without being disagreeable10:51 Letting go of microaggressions, honestly13:00 Never pick doormat13:37 The language-buffer tactic16:26 Building trust with someone who sees the world differently19:05 People power and the Overton window23:03 The best question to ask anyone you admire---THE GUESTCongresswoman Analilia Mejia represents New Jersey's 11th Congressional District. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Colombian and Dominican immigrant parents, she spent 25 years as a labor organizer, policy advocate, and coalition builder before winning a special election to Congress in April 2026. Her organizing career included leading the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, serving as Bernie Sanders's national political director during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later serving as deputy director of the Women's Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor. As a member of Congress, she also sits on the House Homeland Security and Small Business committees.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/analiliafornjInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/repanalilia/ ---THE HOSTTannia Suárez is an executive communication coach who works with senior leaders, directors, and founders navigating high-stakes professional environments in English as non-native speakers.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanniasuarez/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asktannia/ ---THE COMMUNITYBecome a Leadership English Insider: https://tanniasuarez.com/insider Watch more episodes of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast

You're in a boardroom. Someone asks you a simple question, are we going to hit the numbers this quarter. You know the answer. You've known it for two weeks. But what comes out is context, and more context, and somewhere around the word "July" you can feel the room start to drift. And then, very kindly, someone asks, "Sorry, so is that a yes?"If that moment made your stomach drop, this one's for you. I walk through why over-explaining isn't actually a language problem (the people I see do this most are the ones with the most expertise, not the least English), the three layers underneath it, and why "be more concise" almost never means what you think it means. You'll leave with the exact question to ask yourself before you answer anything important, a set of openers that force the answer out first, and a one-week exercise you can start today.This one is for you if you've ever watched a room lose patience with you mid-explanation and walked away thinking it was your English, when it wasn't.📌 In this episode:0:00 The boardroom scene1:06 What's actually happening2:10 The three layers7:17 Why the usual fixes don't work8:26 The one question8:59 The before and after10:04 The openers11:21 Explaining vs. persuading and the ladder13:55 Offer the depth14:47 The silence and the intonation piece17:00 The story after the point17:50 The exercise19:37 The closing reframe20:41 The CTAIf this one hit home, I'd love for you to join my Leadership English Accelerator, where we take ideas like this one and practice them with expert feedback: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/leadership📌 Follow Tannia:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asktanniaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanniasuarez/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asktannia/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@asktanniaYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tanniasuarezSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6i2KREABJOlsZmIuEoDsig?si=777b14460e6a4357Podcast: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcastBlog: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/blogListen to the full conversation and catch every episode of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast🔴 Want exclusive access to episode bonuses? Join the Leadership English Insider community: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/insider-bonus#LeadershipCommunication #ExecutivePresence #BusinessEnglish

For non-native English speakers who've ever felt like the funniest, sharpest version of themselves only exists in their first language, this conversation names something rarely said out loud.Omer Haciomeroglu spent eleven years building a tech company in English, his second language, and slowly noticed a specific superpower wasn't translating: his humor. The timing, the cultural references, the split-second wit that builds trust with investors and teammates, all of it moved slower in English, and by the time the joke was ready, the room had moved on.We talk about what he calls the chokehold, the fear-based overthinking that freezes even highly capable founders mid-sentence, the invisible stress most immigrant founders carry alone, and the breakdown at a dinner table that changed how he leads. We also get into why, after eleven years and two major breakdowns, he refuses to call any of it failure, and the forty-four years it took him to fully claim his identity as a sculptor alongside his coaching work.This conversation is for you if you've ever felt like your personality gets lost somewhere between your first language and your second.---📌 In this episode:0:00 Introduction1:01 Meet Omer Haciomeroglu1:20 The "stolen superpower": losing his humor in English4:10 "By the time you communicate, it's already late"5:54 The engine brake: choking under high-stakes pressure8:01 Years of stuttering and the inner work that changed it10:12 Removing yourself from the equation12:01 The 100 open browser tabs metaphor12:46 Why simplifying reads as more competent, not less14:39 Culture, communication styles, and adapting without losing yourself16:42 The fear underneath every communication block19:06 The overthinking chokehold20:14 Intention versus expectation22:53 The debrief: how real transformation actually happens25:39 The five-minute grounding call27:31 Scar tissue, not failure29:58 The dinner where it all came out31:49 44 years to say yes to being a sculptor32:44 The fear of being seen34:20 It's like breathing, you have to do it35:34 Leaving the startup for breathing room36:22 "And, not or": integrating art, tech, and leadership37:22 Expression versus communication38:25 Closing thoughts---📌 About Omer Haciomeroglu:Omer Haciomeroglu is a founder coach and contemporary artist based in Austin, Texas. Born in Istanbul, he studied in the US and has lived across California, Sweden, and Turkey. He spent eleven years as a tech founder in deep-tech product design, hardware, software, UI/UX, and industrial design, navigating two major breakdowns he now treats as raw material rather than failure. Today he advises deep-tech founders hands-on, from post-MVP through Seed to Series B, on execution and leadership. Alongside his coaching work, he is a self-taught sculptor working primarily in animal bones and epoxy clay, an identity it took him forty-four years to fully claim.📌 Follow Omer: Instagram (@omerh.xyz) — https://www.instagram.com/omerh.xyz/ and LinkedIn (Omer Haciomeroglu) — https://www.linkedin.com/in/omerha/📌 More from Omer: https://omerh.xyz and https://www.qwake.tech---Listen to the full conversation and catch every episode of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast🔴 Want exclusive access to episode bonuses? Join the Leadership English Insider community: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/insider---📱 Follow Tannia:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asktanniaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanniasuarez/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asktannia/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@asktanniaYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tanniasuarezSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6i2KREABJOlsZmIuEoDsig?si=777b14460e6a4357Podcast: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcastBlog: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/blog🔔 Subscribe for weekly strategies on executive presence and leadership communication for global professionals.#LeadershipCommunication #ExecutivePresence #BusinessEnglish

For non-native English speakers who've ever said the right thing in a meeting and watched someone else get the credit for it, this episode names exactly why that keeps happening, and it isn't your English.Tannia breaks down why most executive presence training was never built with non-native speakers in mind, reverse-engineered instead from what already sounded familiar to the native English speakers writing the rules. She walks through the real mechanics of the translation lag (a timing problem, not a fluency problem), why directness needs calibration rather than a fixed formula, and why the apology for an accent costs more credibility than the accent itself ever does.This conversation is for you if you've ever felt like you were doing everything the leadership books tell you to do, and it still didn't feel like it fit.📌 In this episode: 0:00 The meeting where someone else got the credit for your point 1:06 Why the executive presence model was never built for you 2:43 The reframe: wrong scoreboard, not behind 3:14 Three things nobody tells you about executive presence 3:21 The translation lag is a timing problem, not a fluency problem 4:26 Client story: replacing nervous filler with grounded pauses 5:21 Directness isn't rudeness, it's calibration 6:35 Client story: the executive told she was too quiet 7:36 Your accent isn't costing you the room, your apology is 8:53 Client story: the executive who over-explained to compensate 9:55 The three moves to build instead11:51 Closing thoughts📌 About Tannia:Tannia Suárez is an Executive and Leadership Communication Coach who helps ambitious non-native English-speaking professionals build executive presence, communicate with clarity, and lead with confidence in English.Through her coaching practice and the Leadership English Podcast, she works with international executives across industries to close the gap between who they already are and how they're perceived under pressure.Listen to the full conversation and catch every episode of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast🔴 Want exclusive access and bonuses? Join the Leadership English Insider community: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/insider#LeadershipCommunication #ExecutivePresence #BusinessEnglish

For non-native English speakers building executive presence, this conversation asks a question most leaders feel but rarely say out loud: what does it actually cost to spend years hiding your accent just to fit into the room?Silke Meixner was born in Frankfurt, baptized in Kabul, and raised across Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Congo before her family settled in Germany. By the time she built her career at IBM and Deloitte, she'd learned to sound as proper as possible, toning down her accent and her international background at every turn.We talk about the moment that changed her relationship with her own executive presence: a teammate's comment, "you were actually really fun," that revealed the extra-formal persona she'd built for consulting. From there, we get into the three-legged stool she uses to stay grounded in high-stakes meetings, cultural fluency as a leadership skill, why small talk works differently across cultures, how intonation alone can shift English from sounding confident to sounding aggressive, and the framework she calls cautious authenticity, knowing what to share at work and when.This conversation is for you if you're a non-native English speaker who has ever wondered whether the polished, formal version of yourself is actually helping your credibility, or quietly working against it.📌 In this episode:0:00 Introduction0:59 Meet Silke Meixner1:44 Growing up across Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Congo, and Germany2:46 Why her multicultural upbringing became a career asset4:08 Owning her accent instead of hiding it6:23 Building an "extra formal" persona in consulting7:56 "You were actually really fun"9:01 Why relaxing is received better than staying formal10:16 How ease unlocks clearer thinking11:25 Staying grounded as the only non-native speaker, only woman, only virtual attendee12:03 The three-legged stool framework14:49 Active listening and reading hidden agendas16:45 Why small talk is relationship infrastructure17:35 The ask-and-share formula for small talk20:31 The "what?" intonation exercise21:38 Male-dominated rooms and choosing what to conform to24:02 Sharing her passion for benevolent AI27:35 Cautious authenticity, what's safe to share and when29:20 Her rule: never ask about kids or a spouse unless mentioned31:38 What she wishes more people asked her33:19 "And, not or," integrating AI and ancient wisdom35:02 Closing thoughts📌 About Silke Meixner:Silke Meixner is a Principal at ZS Consulting, where she leads customer-centric marketing and digital transformation work for global organizations. Born in Frankfurt and raised across Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Congo before settling in Germany for her high school years, she went on to study and work in the UK before building her career at IBM and Deloitte. She now lives in Los Angeles, holds dual German and US citizenship, and travels internationally for her work in technology and innovation consulting. Alongside her corporate career, Silke is involved in initiatives promoting benevolent AI and describes herself as "a hippie in corporate clothing," integrating ancient wisdom traditions with her work in digital transformation.📌 Follow Silke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silkemeixner/ 🎧 Listen to the full conversation and catch every episode of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast🔴 Want exclusive access to episode bonuses? Join the Leadership English Insider community: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/insider-bonus#Leadership #Communication #ExecutivePresence #BusinessEnglish

You have been in that meeting.A critical decision is being made. You have a real perspective on it. You reach for the words in English and the conversation moves on. The moment closes. And you stay quiet, not because you had nothing to say, but because the cost of saying it imperfectly felt too high.In this episode, Tannia names something that most high-performing international executives have been carrying privately for years: the translation gap.The translation gap is not a language problem. It is the distance between who you know yourself to be and who the room gets to experience. And it does not respond to more language study.--------In this episode:✅ What actually shifts when executives close this gap at the level it actually operates, which is identity, not language.✅ Why the most capable people in the room go the quietest, and why that is not a coincidence.✅ The three-layer cost that most executives underestimate: before the meeting, during it, and in the private debrief no one else sees.✅ Why fluency and leadership presence are two completely different skills.--------If you have ever walked out of a high-stakes meeting knowing you had more to offer than the room got to see, this episode is for you.You have done the hard work to get into the room. Let's make sure the room knows you are there.Become a Leadership English Insider, free weekly strategies for global professionals who are ready to lead as their full selves in English:👉 https://tanniasuarez.com/insiderWork with Tannia privately:👉 https://tanniasuarez.com/leadership#LeadershipCommunication #ExecutivePresence #BusinessEnglish #GlobalLeaders #LeadershipEnglish

Victoria Rozanska didn't have connections, referrals, or a native English advantage when she set her sights on Google. What she had was patience, persistence, and a mindset she calls detachment from the outcome.In this episode, Victoria walks Tannia through her path from Poland to the UK, into Google Dublin, and finally to Google's Bay Area headquarters, where she landed on a Friday and started her new role the following Monday.Along the way, she discovered something most people never expect. Even her native language became foreign to her in a professional context. Selling to Polish clients from Dublin, she realized her English business vocabulary was stronger than her Polish one.We talk about the real mechanics of building a life from scratch in a new country, not through networking events, but through curiosity, and the cultural adjustments that catch so many non-native professionals off guard: America's shout-out culture, the rhythm of small talk, and the specific phrases that signal contribution instead of interruption in a meeting.This conversation is for you if you've ever wondered whether your English is good enough to lead, because Victoria's story makes the case that the real barriers were never linguistic.In this episode:0:00 Introduction0:48 Starting out in Poland, finding the tech path2:27 Applying to Google and waiting for years4:17 Detachment from the outcome5:56 Rejected, then accepted months later6:13 The moment she realized she didn't know "business Polish"11:22 Small talk as relational infrastructure, not filler12:51 Landed in San Francisco on Friday, started Monday14:38 Why American small talk feels different15:44 Building community from zero through shared interests16:43 The silent ecstatic beach dance that led to real friendships22:54 America's shout-out culture25:17 Why shout-outs are part of good leadership28:52 The workplace phrases that change how you're heard29:31 "To your point," piggybacking, and active listening35:24 Coaching, identity, and life beyond the job title39:09 Closing thoughtsAbout Victoria RozanskaVictoria (Wiktoria) Rozanska is a Global Partnerships professional at Google, podcast host, certified Ikigai coach, and international career advocate whose journey spans five countries, three continents, and multiple career transitions, all while building her career in a language that isn't her native one. Originally from Szczecin, Poland, Victoria moved abroad alone at 18 to study Business Management in the UK. She gained experience through internships at HP, Accenture, and Google, later securing a full-time role at Google by applying directly through the company's website with no personal connections or referrals.Since joining Google, her career has taken her from the UK to Dublin, Silicon Valley, and New York City, working across sales, strategy, onboarding, and business growth before moving into Global Partnerships, where she now works with companies across the apps, gaming, podcast, and digital media ecosystem.Alongside her corporate career, Victoria is the founder of Aligned with Ikigai, a coaching platform focused on purpose, career transitions, and identity in a rapidly changing world. She's also the creator and host of The Human Presence, a podcast featuring conversations with founders, investors, artists, technologists, and multidimensional thinkers exploring what it means to stay human in the age of AI.📌 Follow Victoria: @wiktoriaer (Instagram) and on LinkedIn (Victoria Rozanska)📌 Follow Victoria’s new podcast here: https://www.instagram.com/the_humanpresence 🔴 Get exclusive access to episode bonuses: https://tanniasuarez.com/insider#LeadershipCommunication #ExecutivePresence #BusinessEnglish

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In this episode, we'll dive into practical strategies for building unshakeable confidence as an executive whose first language isn’t English, and then share five powerful transition phrases that will help you guide any meeting or presentation with ease. Whether you’re leading board discussions, investor calls, or team stand-ups, these tips will keep you focused on your message and off the hamster wheel of self-doubt.Get the full notes for this episode here: tanniasuarez.com/blog/meeting-transition-phrases🔥 MORE RESOURCES TO LEVEL UP YOUR ENGLISH & CAREER📥 Download Your Bonus eBookGet the proven leadership communication framework used by professionals at Apple, Google, AWS, and more. 👉 https://www.tanniasuarez.com/lead📺 Subscribe for More VideosMaster business English, executive presence, and powerful communication skills in every episode. 👉 https://www.youtube.com/c/tanniasuarez?sub_confirmation=1📱 Follow Me on Your Favorite PlatformsGet daily tips on fluency, leadership, and English confidence. 👉 https://tanniasuarez.com/social🎙️ Speak with Confidence & ClarityJoin the American English Accelerator and start sounding more professional and fluent at work and beyond. 👉 https://tanniasuarez.com/pronunciation🎯 Need Personalized Help?Get expert coaching to lead in English with clarity and confidence. 👉 https://tanniasuarez.com/leadership